"They shouldn't have been so impatient," said Plantagenet Russell, turning over his big book. "I had only reached the letter H, but I'll send a card at once to all the rest, or we shall have daily processions."
"Well, I'm very glad they came, for now you see with your own eye, Mr. Russell, that my poor clergy, doctors, sailors, and relations of the above, do exist!" They all laughed.
"Of course they exist, Miss Whitburn, but if they had been properly careful and hard-working they wouldn't now be out of elbows. And Miss Smith was so ridiculous about her age!"
"She was a bit jibby about it, wasn't she? but I expect she had a lover somewhere, and she doesn't like to let it out."
"Oh, Toney, you are too romantic—you always were," said Mrs. Faber.
"Anyhow, you can't complain of deaf Captain Grant. He looked so cheerful, and did not want to hide his age."
Plantagenet turned over to the letter G in his book.
"Here he is; Grant, Charles, Captain. Lost hearing and work. Very small income, age sixty, only poor relations, references."
"Of course they sound uninteresting as tabulated folk. I'm sure St. Francis never tabulated people! There's a lovely story of one of the brothers, who was nursing a leper, being told to go fifteen miles off, and not liking to leave his patient, took him up on his back from dawn to sunrise all the way, and no one could believe he could have done it in the time, so everybody was awfully astonished."
"I'm thankful there are no lepers in England now, Miss Whitburn," said Mr. Russell in his drawling voice; "I'm rather afraid you might wish me to carry one of them fifteen miles if you sent me on a message. Couldn't do it, I assure you!"